Why YOU Shouldn’t Be Using Social Media

Posted by Pete - 14/10/08 at 09:10:50 am

There’s a cancer in our industry. It’s called ARS, or Aspirational Rockstar Syndrome. It’s why people (including ourselves occasionally) write content with no real purpose other than to hit the homepage of Sphinn, or Digg, or to attract Stumbles.

So why is this a problem? Two reasons. Firstly, writing that kind of content doesn’t really help you. It just kicks your server’s ass when it goes right, and is a waste of time when it doesn’t. More to the point though, if you’re reading this, you’re probably in marketing, and therein lies the bigger problem.

Social Media Doesn’t Get You Clients

Now I want you to read that again. Really let it sink in. All that time you’re spending on creating linkbait is just shouting into the echo chamber. Yes, it might get you 800 visits from Sphinn, or 5,000 from StumbleUpon, or 50,000 from Digg. But what’s the point if it doesn’t pay?

Now, I’m sure at this point some people are going to mention this guy. Don’t get me wrong, I have huge respect for Lyndon and what he does, but he’s very much the exception, rather than the rule, and social media is what he does. You (and again I’m generalising, so I may be wrong) don’t. You have to offer more than that. Because you can’t say to a client “I got a client on CNN, The Times, The Sun and more”.

So I’m going to outline a few things to think about next time you decide you want to write that kind of content.

1. Will It Help You Rank?

Is this going to attract links that will help you rank for useful terms that will get you traffic in the months and years to come. In this case, I’m referring to posts like Awsome Google Analytics Hacks and Tips, Free GIMP Brush Sets and SERP Click-Through Rates. These posts all got large numbers of traffic, large numbers of links, and now we rank well for good terms that send us traffic. Also, they’ve been bookmarked by large numbers of people who refer back to them daily, and they still occasionally go hot on social sites, sending yet more traffic.

However, it’s the search bit that’s important there. The links we got to them allowed us to get traffic, which has helped get people to notice us. It’s also meant that our traffic levels are just over 3,000 visits a day (using last week’s data). Not bad for a site that we only really started promoting about 12 weeks ago.

2. Will It Get You Clients?

Assign a value to your time. Then work out how much it will cost you to write that. Now, is it worth spending your time doing that, instead of spending it client hunting? Sure, finding potential clients and getting in touch is less fun, but it does tend to pay somewhat better.

So I propose this: for every hour you spend writing blog posts, or commenting on SEOmoz or browsing Sphinn or Reddit, spend an hour making lists of clients to contact, and then getting in touch. Make a commitment to work on your business as well as having fun with it. Because it’s the latter part of that that’s going to earn you money in the end.

3. Will It Position You As Experts?

Thanks to our posts on Taguchi Multivariate PPC Testing, Internal Linking (part 1 and part 2) and so on, we’ve managed to get enough attention to be asked to speak at SMX. Note that we didn’t pitch for the session I’ll be speaking at. We were asked. That’s the power of writing really useful stuff. Other good examples are SEOmoz’s Ranking Factors and Rae’s Linking Guide.

This is great stuff because the people at the top of your particular food chain will notice it, and it builds trust in you and your skills. It gives you an air of credibility when you go on to talk about other things, because you’ve proved that you know your stuff. It makes you an authority.

So What Are You Going To Do Today?

You can either take this post, take it to heart and act on it, deciding to spend time marketing yourself, rather than just inflating your ego, or you can ignore it and continue to wonder why you aren’t rolling in clients. There’s a wonderful saying of Thomas Edison’s, which is “Genius: Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” It’s true for success too. Doing the grunt work isn’t much fun, but it does pay off.